QUILLER
Thank the gods, he made it.” RabbitEar stares down into his tea cup as though he finds his own reflection a little curious.
We sit before the fire inside the parents’ shelter that perches on the lip of the cliff overlooking the quest wall. The shelter, a natural lodge, is formed by seven big black boulders that lean inward against one another. The only way in or out is through a gap barely big enough to slide through sideways, which means it’s defensible if we’re attacked by predators. Not only that, there’s a blocking stone to the right of the gap, just in case we need to roll it over the entry to seal ourselves in from wolves or lions.
“He’ll be all right now. He knows he can do it.” RabbitEar swirls the tea in his cup.
“Hope so.” My dream has not left me for an instant. Behind my eyes, all I do is watch my son falling toward the rocks below.
I rip off another hunk of mammoth jerky, and chew it while I peer through the gap at the evening outside. I can see all the way to the far horizon. If our son cries out, it’s five heartbeats to race out and get to a position where we can look down upon him. Which may or may not be useful. After all, Little Gull’s parents heard their son screaming for help, but they didn’t have time to climb down and reach him before he toppled to his death.
RabbitEar shoves hair behind his ear and turns to me. “But why did it take him so long? He should have made the first children’s camp a full hand of time before he did. Were the handholds slick? Did he pull a muscle on the climb?”
“Maybe he was just being careful, taking his time like you told him.”
“I thought his legs were trembling. Did you?”
Reaching out, I touch my husband’s hand where it clutches his tea cup. “Jawbone made it. That’s what counts. He’ll do better tomorrow. He just needs a good night’s rest.”
I toss another chunk of bison dung onto the flames. There’s very little wood up here on the cliff top, and dung is a slow-burning, efficient fuel, but our stack is dwindling fast. “We’ll have to gather more dung tomorrow.”
RabbitEar nods and sips his tea.
We sit together in companionable silence for a long while, just gazing absently at the fire, before I say, “I have a strange question for you.”
He frowns. “What is it?”
“When we were in the cavern of blue faces, were you counting how many voices Jawbone heard?”
RabbitEar shakes his head. “No. Why?”
Sparks pop and glitter as they float upward.
“I think he heard three voices that day. The singing woman, the sad man, and the other boy.”
RabbitEar lifts a shoulder. “He’s a power child, Quiller. Spirits speak with him.”
“It doesn’t worry you?”
“Well . . . a little, but I assume they are friendly spirits. If it were a problem, Hoodwink would tell us.”
My heart lurches suddenly as wingbeats thump the darkness outside the lodge. RabbitEar and I turn simultaneously to look up at the lodge peak. There’s a tiny crack between the stones that lets the campfire smoke out into the night air. When something passes over it, disturbing the flow of smoke, RabbitEar lunges to his feet and runs out into the freezing cold.
“What is it?” I call, grabbing for my spear.
“I don’t see a thing. There’s nothing out here.”
I sink back to the floor with my spear across my lap. “Probably just a big owl skimming over the lodge.”
RabbitEar slides back inside the shelter and gives me a puzzled look as he sits down again. “Sounded bigger.”
“Magnified by the seriousness of our conversation, I suspect.”
He chuckles. “Yes, probably.”
Despite our smiles, an uneasy feeling has taken hold of me. The night itself seems to be straining to hear, holding its breath, waiting for the creature to return. It’s like waiting for a small voice to pick up the words of a broken song, but the song simply drifts into unearthly silence—the ghostly calm of things passing away and never to be seen again.
RabbitEar reaches for his cup and props it atop his drawn-up knee. “Why are you worried about the things our son hears?”
I swallow my jerky, rip off another bite, and around a mouthful answer, “Never mind. I probably shouldn’t have said anything. You’re right. He’s a power child.”
His red brows draw together over his nose. “I know that tone of voice. Tell me.”
“Oh, it’s just . . . It’s something Hoodwink said to me when I’d seen five summers.”
“What was that?”
Lionlike, the roars of a bison bull echoes down from the Ice Giant Mountains and seems to rumble in the spirit bag that hangs around my throat. Is the bull trying to catch my attention to tell me something?
“Do you remember the battle in the Steppe Lands where the Rust People attacked in the middle of the night and wiped out half our village?”
He leans back. “Of course I do. I can still hear the screams and war cries. Two of my uncles died in that fight.”
“My favorite cousin died, as well. She was a beautiful little girl. Always smiling and teasing me.” Behind my eyes, I see shrieking women and children flooding out of our lodges, trying to get to the boats to escape, while our warriors are dying around us. “Afterward, my soul fought the battle over and over. Not just at night in my dreams. Even in the day I was terrified. Hoodwink found me one afternoon where I’d wedged myself beneath an ice shelf to feel safe. He sat down beside me and started talking softly.”
“What did he say?”
Flame shadows waver over the boulders. I squint at them, for they seem to be alive, moving in some pattern I don’t understand. “He told me he knew why I was hiding. He said there is a part of us that is only innocent when no one is looking.”
RabbitEar gives me a curious smile. “That’s a strange thing to tell a child. What did he mean?”
“He explained that I was too young to have fought in the battle, and I shouldn’t feel guilty for not saving my family.”
“Were you feeling guilty?”
I nod. “And Hoodwink knew it. He was very kind to me that day.”
RabbitEar sets his half-full cup down and reaches over to the bag of jerky to pull out a strip. “I don’t understand what this has to do with Jawbone,” he says as he uses his teeth to rip off a piece.
“It’s probably nothing, but each day he seems to hear more and more voices and he’s more and more terrified. I don’t think he’s slept through a night in moons. I suppose I’m wondering if his terror is guilt turned inside out.”
RabbitEar chews jerky while he considers my words. “You mean because he watched his family hunted down and torn apart by lions?”
“Of course. How would you feel?”
Before he answers, he swallows his bite of jerky. The lines across his forehead deepen as he grimaces out through the narrow gap to the luminous night beyond. “Guilt is part of the warrior’s burden, Quiller. It never goes away. We all feel guilty for the people who died, people we should have protected and couldn’t. Jawbone will have to get used to it. It’s life.”
“For adults, it’s just life, because we’ve learned how to use it as a weapon to keep us wide awake, but when I was a child, it was a monster lurking in the dark inside me. It watched me all the time.”
His eyes narrow. “What do you mean it ‘watched’ you?”
“I could see it moving behind my eyes. It was a dark shape.”
RabbitEar shrugs. “A scared little girl’s imagination.”
“Maybe, but it sounds a little bit like the cave Jawbone sees in the back of his head, the place where the other boy hides.”
A softness comes over my husband’s face. He gazes out at the wavering curtains of deep green that eddy and flash as Sister Sky begins her nightly dance. “Why has he never told me about that cave?”
“I’m not sure why he told me.”
He swallows his last bite of jerky, and cleans his hands off on his boots, where the oil will help waterproof the leather. “Because you’re his mother. You’d never tell him it was silly or cowardly.”
When the wind picks up, the air outside is alight with twinkling particles of frost. I study them as they blow and whirl. “You wouldn’t, either.”
RabbitEar tilts his head uncertainly. “I hope that’s true, but I’m his father. It’s my duty to teach him how to be a man. On occasion that requires hard lessons, like pointing out when he’s acting like a baby.” When I start to object, he holds up a hand, and adds, “I don’t think the other boy is just a childish fear. That’s not what I meant. I’m only saying that Jawbone trusts you more than me, because you’re his mother.”
Frowning, I watch the flame shadows. They’ve changed. Now, they resemble hunching creatures moving around the lodge in a circle, bobbing and weaving, as though conjuring spirits from the black boulders.
“What are you thinking?” RabbitEar softly inquires.
“Just . . . I wonder if the cave behind the buffalo hide is the one place no one is looking. The one place where’s he’s innocent.”
RabbitEar goes quiet for a long time, and I fall into memories of my childhood. I couldn’t find a place inside where I was innocent. I had to hide outside, beneath ice shelves and in tangles of brush.
“Did you hear me?” RabbitEar asks.
“No, sorry.” I reach out and slip my arm over his muscular shoulders to hug him. “What did you say?”
“I changed the subject and asked you about Lynx. He hears voices, too. Do you think it’s guilt for the times he ran in battle and people died?”
I give him a curious look. “So far as I’m aware, he only hears one voice. Quancee’s. Are you aware of others?”
Father Sun long ago disappeared into the underworld, but a vague glow persists, a thin pale line that rims the verdant ocean.
“No, but I find it odd that he hears Quancee even when he’s far from her cave. You’ve seen it. He speaks back to the air all the time.”
“She’s his spirit helper, RabbitEar. That’s normal. I hear Bull Bison and Sister Moon, too. Are you suggesting there’s something wrong with me?”
“No, no, of course not. I’ve just been thinking more and more about what Jorgensen said, and I wonder if he’s right about Lynx.”
“What do you mean?” I ask in a hostile voice.
“Don’t get angry.” RabbitEar lifts a hand to fend off my attack. “Let me just say this: I know he’s been your best friend for most of your life, but each time I see Lynx now, he’s a little less like the person we grew up with. A little more—I don’t know—distant. As though his soul is leaking from his body a little at a time.”
“You’re afraid Quancee is sucking the life from him? Killing him? Is that what you mean?”
RabbitEar nods. “And I’m not the only one worried about it. Mink has tried to speak with him about it, but Lynx just smiles beneficently at his brother and tells him not to worry. It’s as if none of us really exist anymore. Quancee is the only thing that matters to him.”
A loud whoosh sounds in the sky beyond the cliff edge and we both stiffen.
“What was that?” I whisper.
RabbitEar stares at me. “Don’t know, but it was much bigger than an owl. Sounded huge.”
I stare upward and listen, but the creature doesn’t return. All I hear is the deep subdued roars of the Ice Giants and the snapping of the fire.
“Getting back to Lynx. He’s struggling to learn everything Quancee can teach him. I’m sure it isn’t easy. He says Quancee is dying, and he doesn’t have much time. Right now, she has to be the most important thing in his life.”
“Then you think it’s impossible that she’s extending her life by feeding off his soul? Killing him bit by bit?”
“It’s impossible. He’d tell me if he thought that was true.”
RabbitEar hesitates, seems to consider whether he ought to say what he’s thinking, then, with trepidation, says, “You love Lynx, Quiller. Not so long ago, you were supposed to marry him. Are you sure that isn’t blinding you to the truth? Think about—”
“Listen to me, my husband. One day Lynx plans to return to our people. I’m convinced he will become a great teacher and leader. Quancee is helping him to do that. That’s the truth I see. Now I’m going to sleep.” I flop onto my back and glare at the firelit smoke hovering on the ceiling, waiting its chance to escape through the smoke hole into the night beyond.
“This is important, Quiller. Are you sure you don’t want to finish discussing—”
“I’m tired, RabbitEar. We have to gather fuel tomorrow, and I must be standing on the cliff at dawn. I want Jawbone to see me when he starts climbing up. Don’t you want your son to see you waving at him?”
RabbitEar gives me a tight smile. “Of course I do.”
He rolls up in his cape before the fire and turns his back to me.
Fifty heartbeats later, I hear RabbitEar softly say, “You should start considering what we will do if Lynx returns to us as a soulless monster.”